Resilience Speakers Archives | Keynote Entertainment Blog

August 17, 2023August 17, 2023

5 Resilience Speakers to Help You Build Stronger Teams

Whether it’s striving to achieve a professional target or trying to conquer a personal challenge, resilience plays a huge part in our everyday lives. The more resilient we are, the more successfully we can navigate those challenges – and that’s where our specialised resilience speakers can help.

Years of experience providing motivational speakers that specialise in the area of resilience has shown us that these speakers come in many forms, and from a variety of backgrounds. Some have overcome immense physical challenges after a life-changing accident, some have studied for years to develop expertise in a particular area, such as teaching sales teams to be more resilient. And some are dedicated to providing a more holistic solution to building resilience and boosting performance through techniques such as mindfulness.

Whichever resilience speaker you choose, rest assured that you’ll be providing your team with the tools to help them cope when things don’t go to plan. And that helps guard against stress and burnout, creating a happier, healthier and more productive workforce – an environment where your employees and your business can thrive.

We have a some of the world’s leading experts from a broad range of life experiences ready to share their own inspiring stories of resilience with your team. Their engaging presentations, packed full of practical tips and advice, will help your staff perform better under pressure, and bounce back quicker when things go wrong.

Our Top 5 Resilience Speakers

1. Michael Licenblat: Sales resilience

While businesses invest substantial sums of money into educating their sales teams on aspects like finding leads, effective questioning and refining their closing skills, Michael Licenblat believes they often overlook the key force impacting sales – the salesperson’s ability to handle resistance and rejections. In his presentations, Michael provides practical techniques for recovering quickly from challenges, dealing effectively with negativity and developing a more resilient mental attitude. Read more about Michael here.

2. Sophie Delezio: Personal resilience

Sophie Delezio is a survivor. Critically injured in a car crash at two years of age, Sophie sustained burns to 85% of her body, lost a hand and both legs below the knee. And then, in another tragic accident just two years later, she suffered a brain injury and multiple fractures. Her determination to live life to the full and embrace every opportunity in the years since has been a true lesson in resilience, and one she shares with honesty, integrity and a good dose of humour. Read more about Sophie here.

3. Dr. Amy Silver: Resilience in the face of fear

Psychologist and bestselling author, Dr. Amy Silver, believes that one of the biggest leadership challenges we face is managing our fear – our automatic, unconscious response to pressure. In her presentations, Amy breaks down the psychology behind fear and provides practical tools for moving beyond it to a more helpful response. The result? Deeper connections, more influence over decisions, quicker action, more calm and more fun! Read more about Amy here.

4. Ciara Lancaster: Change resilience

Bestselling author Ciara Lancaster is passionate about helping people transcend the chaos that comes from endless, fast-paced workplace change. Using a blend of psychology, neuroscience and change management techniques, Ciara presents a 3-step framework to overcoming change fatigue. Designed to ready teams for change with more optimism, energy and self-belief, her presentations include stress management and mindset hacks as well as self-care and self-leadership strategies for sustainable success. Read more about Ciara here.

5. Chelsea Pottenger: Mental resilience

Australia’s poster girl for mental health and mindfulness, Chelsea Pottenger, is on a mission to empower high performance through mindfulness. Her presentations are packed with actionable insights to help teams perform at their best without feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Teams will discover the power of emotional flexibility and adaptability in building resilience and grit, and learn techniques to boost their creative thinking, improve their gut health and better their overall physical and mental performance. Read more about Chelsea here.

We have Australia’s leading resilience experts, including Chelsea Pottenger, Michael Licenblat, Ciara Lancaster, Dr. Amy Silver and Sophie Delezio on stand-by to share their insights and advice, ready to help you build more resilient teams. If you’d like us to introduce you, simply get in touch with us for a chat!

March 31, 2023March 31, 2023

Transform Your Thinking with this 3-Step Mindset Makeover

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” – Zig Ziglar

Nature versus nurture… it’s an age-old debate. Are we born with innate skills, talents and capabilities, with our potential predetermined by our genetic make-up? Or do we have the power to transform ourselves through learning, effort and dedication? That’s the difference between a ‘fixed’ and a ‘growth’ mindset, between self-imposed limits and a whole world of possibilities.

Back in 2006, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck introduced the revolutionary idea of the ‘growth mindset’ – a belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through hard work, dedication and continuous learning, rather than being predestined. It’s since become a bit of a cult concept, widely accepted around the world as a critical driver of success.

A growth mindset isn’t simply about being open-minded or having a positive outlook (although they’re wonderful attributes). It’s about grit and resilience, proactively overcoming negative thought patterns, embracing challenges and feedback, seeing failure as an opportunity to learn – truly believing you’re the master of your own future. It’s the ultimate motivator, and it’s the key to realising your potential.

One of the greatest quotes to capture the distinction between mindsets was articulated by Muhammad Ali – “Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

If you want to smash through those fixed, self-limiting beliefs and uncover your ‘impossible’ potential, here’s what you need to do…

1. Turn the negatives around

“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” – Henry Ford

Emma Murray, renowned high performance mindset coach with a client list including AFL Premiership clubs and Olympic stars, believes that negative thoughts are one of the biggest roadblocks to fulfilling your potential. She says that “we have between 50,000 and 90,000 thoughts every day and mostly they revolve around the same 7-9 unhelpful themes, and they stop us doing fun stuff, taking risks, stretching ourselves and performing at our best.”

The kicker is, our thoughts aren’t necessarily real. Emma says, “They’re just stories that our over-protective minds tell us as a way of keeping us safe.” She believes that by questioning the stories we tell ourselves and recognising the thoughts that are holding us back, we can begin to achieve our potential.

High-performance coach Stephanie Bown also believes that you need to “catch yourself in the doom loop of your own making.” She suggests asking yourself whether the negative thought is helpful or unhelpful, questioning where it comes from and whether it’s just a habit you’re caught in. According to Stephanie, the way we talk to ourselves, our relationship with ourselves, can be “the difference between living in a prison of self-imposed limitations, or a sanctuary of freedom and purpose.”

Another way to turn around ‘negative’ thoughts is by reframing them. Burns survivor and humanitarian Turia Pitt suggests that next time you’re not looking forward to something, let’s say a training session, try reframing it as something you get to do, not something you have to do. It’s a simple growth mindset switch that completely changes your outlook.

In Carol Dweck’s TEDx talk, she tells a story about a high school in Chicago that, instead of giving kids a ‘fail’ for courses they don’t pass, grades them as ‘not yet’. Those two simple words, so critical to a growth mindset, instil a belief in those kids that with work and perseverance, they will eventually succeed. It’s a beautiful way to turn a ‘negative’ around.

As Carol says, “Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them. Just by knowing about the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways.”

2. Learn something new

A large part of a growth mindset is realising that there are weaknesses and strengths you haven’t developed yet, opportunities you haven’t explored and so many things to learn. And that means breaking out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to try new things.

Whether it’s learning a new language, speaking in front of a crowd, mastering a musical instrument or cooking a fancy new dish, trying new things doesn’t just make you a better linguist… or public speaker… or musician… or cook… it actually makes you smarter. True, it’s called neuroplasticity.

According to the brainiacs at CCSU Business & Development, practicing a new skill increases the density of myelin – the white matter in your brain that improves performance. It also stimulates brain neurons, creating fresh pathways and connections that become stronger the more you use them.

Stephanie Bown calls this the ‘potential zone’ – the place where learning and growth happen. Where latent talent hasn’t yet been realised, where those fresh connections in your brain haven’t yet been created. Stephanie says that “Realising potential means putting your natural strengths and capabilities to work in new ways and strengthening brain interconnectivity.”

You brain learns what you teach it. It’s literally wired to adapt to the challenges and conditions you present it with. So, if you want to cultivate a growth mindset, go ahead and put it to the test!

Fun fact: To optimise the brain’s circuits, pathways and connections you rarely use simply fade away (it’s called synaptic pruning) – it’s why you probably can’t remember any of the Latin you learned in Year 7. Use it or lose it!

3. Make friends with failure

Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player of all time, once said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 3,000 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Many people fail, some spectacularly, before they achieve great success. J.K. Rowlings manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was rejected by 12 publishing houses before it was picked up. Steven Spielberg was rejected twice by the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Jerry Seinfeld was booed off stage during his first stand-up comedy gig. History is littered with famous ‘failures’ who have gone on to achieve enormous success.

But just imagine if failure had stopped them in their tracks.

Ben Crowe, professional mentor and mindset coach to stars including Ash Barty, Stephanie Gilmore and the Australian cricket team, believes wholeheartedly that “the greatest threat to success is avoiding failure.”

According to Ben, 90% of performances are sabotaged by the fear of failure or focusing on the result. He believes that if we treated failure like a scientist would – a negative result is simply a data point that helps prove or disprove a hypothesis, rather than a reflection of the scientist’s capability – then failure wouldn’t be an issue.

When we choose to reframe failure as learning, failure ceases to exist.

Adventurous entrepreneur Richard Branson is also one that embraces failure as a learning tool, vocal in his opinion that “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” Dusting yourself off and getting up again is the essence of a growth mindset.

In the end, the power to write your own story and realise your full potential lies within the choices you make. As concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl reminds us, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Your mindset is absolutely a choice. So why not choose growth?

We have some of Australia’s leading mindset coaches and high performance experts, including Stephanie Bown, Emma Murray, Ben Crowe and Turia Pitt, ready to provide your team with life-changing practical tools to help them harness the power of a growth mindset. If you’d like us to introduce you, simply get in touch with us for a chat!

June 7, 2022August 8, 2022

Lessons from Turia Pitt: Turning Resilience into Results

If there’s anything the last couple of years on the old Corona-coaster has taught us, it’s that we’re a pretty resilient bunch. We’ve navigated our way through a dictionary’s worth of pandemic buzzwords like outbreaks, lockdowns, home-schooling, pivots, unprecedented times and zoom malfunctions, and are finally seeing our way through the ‘new normal’. So how can we build on all that resilience we’ve amassed and set ourselves up for success? We thought we’d share some lessons from the epitome of resilience, the magnificent Turia Pitt.

Chances are you know who Turia Pitt is – whether from the current season of Celebrity Apprentice, or from her inspirational story of survival. But let me refresh your memory…

At the age of 24, Turia Pitt was super fit, ambitious, determined and happy. An athlete, volunteer paramedic and ex-model, with her high school sweetheart by her side and in her dream job as a mining engineer at the prestigious Argyle Diamond Mine, Turia well and truly had the world at her feet.

And then her world exploded. On 2nd September 2011, Turia was caught in a grassfire whilst competing in a 100km Ultramarathon and suffered horrific full-thickness burns to 65% of her body. She died three times on the operating table, was placed in a medically induced coma, had her left foot amputated and lost seven fingers. Turia miraculously defied the odds by surviving, but her battle had only just begun.

After 864 days and more than 200 operations, Turia was discharged from hospital with a full-body compression suit and mask that had to be worn 23 hours a day for the next two years. She had to relearn how to walk and how to feed herself, and was told she’d likely never run again.

But with ferocious determination and extraordinary resilience, Turia rewrote her story. In the 10 years since the grassfire, she’s authored three best-selling books, competed in the Ironman World Championships, trekked the Kokoda Trail, climbed the Great Wall of China, completed an MBA, become a sought-after motivational speaker, coached more than 40,000 people through her online digital courses and raised more than $1 million for Interplast – a charity that helps burn victims get reconstructive surgery. Oh, and she’s also welcomed two baby boys with partner Michael Hoskin! Quite the list of achievements for someone who wasn’t expected to survive her trauma, let alone thrive in its aftermath.

So what can we learn from Turia’s story?

Resilience will get you results. Our response to adversity, that mental reservoir of strength we tap into when the going gets tough, will determine what happens next when hardship strikes. The good news is that resilience, just like any other skill, can be developed.

In Turia’s words, “The only way we become resilient is by going through testing experiences. We’re not born with or without resilience. It’s not a genetic trait. It’s learned. Walking up that steep hill on the bush walk, when you could easily just turn back instead. Going back to uni to take on that Masters Degree, with your kids at home and a full-time job in tow. Pushing forward with your side hustle even when sales are slow and you’re tired and over it all. Paddling a canoe in the pouring rain. Doing the tough stuff makes you tougher.”

There’s no doubt that the pandemic has made us all tougher and more resilient. But if we want the results, we need to keep building our resilience – and we do that by continually pushing our limits and taking on new challenges.

Imagine if Turia had given up. No one would have blamed her – painful surgeries, gruelling rehabilitation, it’s hard to even imagine the mental fortitude it’s taken to get her to this point. But here we have another valuable lesson, and this one’s all about cultivating a resilient attitude rather than a victim mentality.

As Turia says, “The thing is, while bad days are inevitable, how we respond to them is not… when you’re faced with a bad day, choose to feel ‘brave’, ‘confident’ or ‘kind’ rather than ‘angry’, ‘annoyed’ or ‘disappointed’… A lot of what happens to us is outside our control. But how we feel, how we respond to a situation – that’s completely in our control. So, pick a way to feel that benefits you instead of playing victim to your challenge.”

Build your resilience with a positive attitude, confidence, compassion and optimism.

If there’s a key lesson to be learnt from Turia’s experience, it’s that we all have the power to build our capacity to cope when things go wrong. And when things do go wrong (which they will), it’s our attitude that will determine whether we collapse under the weight of it or thrive in the face of it. Turia summed it up best when she said, “A bad attitude is like a flat tyre, you can’t go anywhere until you change it.”

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Turia Pitt’s inspirational story about overcoming adversity and never giving up will capture your heart and give you a new perspective on life. Her powerful message and incredible energy will have the audience on their feet, crying, laughing and ready to take on every challenge that lies ahead. If you’d like to talk to us about engaging Turia for your next event, simply get in touch with us for a chat.

March 6, 2022March 17, 2022

Guest Blog: From the Battlefield to the Boardroom – Leading Your Team Out of the Pandemic.

Written by military commando and International Aid Worker Mark ‘Squiz’ Squirrell OAM.

Mark 'Squiz' Squirrell

Leading on the Battlefield

The windscreen of the lead vehicle in our three-car convoy is shattered by a bullet. The four-inch armoured glass has done its job; the bullet did not penetrate the vehicle.

We are in the Gaza Strip and stuck at the last intersection before we can travel the final kilometre to the Israeli border. Two Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tanks with barrels pointing directly at our vehicle are thirty metres to our front. Behind, we have an agitated Palestinian crowd that is preventing us from doing a U-turn.

The lead vehicle is allowed to move slowly past the tanks, but the Tank Commander clearly indicates through hand signals that my vehicle, and the third vehicle in our convoy, are to remain. Over the next hour I phone the IDF military liaison officer multiple times to request passage through the intersection. He is on board as we are a convoy of diplomats and aid workers with the right to move freely. The problem is, it’s taking a long time for his message to go up through the chain of command and then back down to the Tank Commander. We need leadership that is decisive, outside the box and relevant to our situation right now.
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Leading your team For 20 years I’ve worked as a Security Risk Manager to assist with the delivery of aid to desperate communities in war-ravaged countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The risks of kidnap, crossfire and landmines were just a few of the likely threats, exacerbated by linguistic limitations, cultural restrictions and dilapidated infrastructure. In an environment like that, trust, teamwork and leadership meant the difference between success and failure.

I often wondered, whilst attempting to navigate through unmapped parts of South Sudan or negotiating with Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka through a translator, how much easier it would be to lead teams during an emergency setting if it was back in Australia. The Covid-19 outbreak gave me the opportunity to find out.

Leading During the Pandemic

During the COVID emergency our training room was converted to an Operations Centre, and over an 18-month period we were at the forefront of Australia’s response to the outbreak, managing teams of nurses and logisticians.

Leading your team Although I had worked within a similar emergency during the 2014 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, there was still a level of anxiety and caution for the rapidly unfolding circumstances.

The COVID projects were time-critical and complex, similar to when I was delivering humanitarian aid overseas. The difference was that we now had at our disposal the latest technology, sealed and uncluttered roads and teams all hailing from the same culture. Unexpectedly though, I found myself embroiled with team dilemmas, inefficiencies and communication challenges similar to those I’d experienced working abroad.

While there were no concerns of kidnap or aerial bombardment and no translation issues, I witnessed the same levels of stress in my teams as when deployed overseas. Why? Because we were able to take on a greater workload and set bigger goals than we would have overseas. The opportunity for stress, team fracturing and things to go wrong was absolutely present, and the best way to mitigate that was to build the team dynamics, monitor and tweak the culture and, most importantly, provide decisive leadership.

Leading your team Prior to the pandemic my company provided keynotes, workshops and team building activities to strengthen workplace performance. Right now my own teams needed this more than anyone. I took them on a metaphorical journey up Mt Everest to learn about teamwork, and used Virtual Reality goggles to strap them into the front seat of the Gaza Scenario that you are halfway through. The experiences allowed for robust conversation, a calibration of thoughts about our own operational issues and most importantly, a distraction from the intense daily pressure. It worked.

Leading Out of the Pandemic

As the Pandemic unfolded there was one aspect of the change to workplaces, regardless of the industry, that made it easy on those making the leadership decisions. The changes were forced upon us by the Government. So what do we do now that those regulations are being wound back?

Leading your team As we begin moving to post-pandemic life, organisations need leadership that is decisive, outside the box and relevant to their current situation. Sound familiar? I learnt very quickly whilst ‘sandwiched’ in the Gaza Strip that the standard operating procedure that worked fine in yesterday’s circumstances was not going to resolve our current problem.

Leaders will now need to:
– Take a long-term approach and not expect team members to suddenly revert back to pre-pandemic operations;
– Acknowledge that there may be some efficiencies and mental health/morale benefits for team members working from home;
– Create other stimulus to entice team members into the office, such as entertainment or team bonding events;
– Create contemporary oversight structures to compliment the newfound autonomy;
– Use external consultants to objectively arrive at suitable frameworks to take the heat away from what will be seen as an imposition by management to team members.
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Leading Out of the Gaza Strip

We were cornered! Two tanks were blocking forward movement and a marauding crowd was building up behind. Similar situations in the past were mitigated by obtaining clearance from the military liaison officer. But that wasn’t working today.

So, if you were there, what would you do next?

We could wave a white flag, but that won’t have any tangible impact on the current circumstances given that those around us already know who and what we represent. We could attempt to reverse and move back through the crowd, hoping that they show some mercy. Unlikely, they have already seen one of our cars get past the blockade and aren’t too happy about that. Plus, hope is not a good strategy when things are going wrong.

I’ll give you a chance to make a phone call. Who would it be to?

The phone call is a decisive leadership decision, but you can’t call the Tank Commander as you don’t have their number. You can call your boss, Ambassadors, Israeli or Palestinian officials but it will still take a long time for the message to get down to those on the ground. So, who will you call?

If you thought that the best option would be to call the lead vehicle; you nailed it! The vehicle has now travelled the one kilometre to the Israeli border and is currently parked alongside IDF soldiers that have a direct line with the Tank Commander. We ask our lead vehicle to use the hole in their windscreen as leverage, threatening to take it to the media if they don’t get the remaining two cars out of the blockade. Within 30 seconds of making the phone call, warning shots are fired into the ground in front of us by the Tank Commander, the crowd pushes back and we’re given the hand signal to move through the intersection. Well done, you have led your team through this difficult situation.

The question for you now is this: What are you doing as a leader that’s decisive, outside the box and relevant to the new normal?

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Want to hear more?

Awarded the coveted green beret during his military service and recognised with an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for his international humanitarian aid work, Mark Squirrell is one of our most courageous and well-respected motivational speakers. Squiz’s presentations include a thrilling recount of his awe-inspiring journey from the world’s most brutal war zones to the summit of Mt Everest, brought to life by the use of authentic footage and Virtual Reality goggles for a truly unforgettable experience. If you’d like Squiz to share his knowledge about leadership, teamwork and communication with your team, get in touch with us for a chat.

March 1, 2022August 8, 2022

5 Key Habits to Help Build Mental, Emotional and Physical Resilience.

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” – Robert Jordan

‘Resilience’ is a buzz word for a reason. It’s our response to adversity, how we overcome hardship and challenges – that mental reservoir of strength we tap into in times of need. Terms like ‘bouncing back’ and ‘rising from the ashes’ are all about harnessing our resilience not just to survive a trauma, but to thrive in the aftermath. So how can we build our resilience to ensure we’re well equipped to deal with whatever curveballs life throws at us? We asked McQuilty ‘Coco’ Quirke, ex-Army medic, trauma survivor and resilience expert, for some advice.

With an 18-year army career covering the war zones of East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan as a medic, soldier and leader, there is no-one better equipped to talk about resilience and overcoming adversity than Coco Quirke.

Having courageously battled post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the horrors of war in Iraq to return to active duty, Coco’s army career was put on hold in 2011 when an improvised explosive device detonated under his vehicle in Afghanistan. Coco was catapulted headfirst 30 metres down the road, suffering multiple life-threatening injuries including two shattered vertebrae, broken bones in every limb and a traumatic brain injury. Coco had to be revived 3 times on his way to Germany for specialist treatment and spent more than 6 months in hospital undergoing multiple surgeries. Defying the doctor’s prognosis, Coco took his first steps just 3 months after the explosion, his recovery hard-fought and his attitude resolute.

On his long road to recovery, both from PTSD and severe injury, Coco worked hard on building a positive mindset. It became his priority, and eventually his saviour, as he dealt with ongoing physical and mental challenges. Coco learnt that practising good habits creates a happy brain, and a happy brain develops a positive mental mindset. And it’s that positive mental mindset that he believes is the key to building resilience.

These are the 5 fundamental habits that continue to help Coco maintain his positive mentality:

1. #take3steps
The hardest 3 steps you will take every day will be the first 3 steps you take away from your bed. Your bed is your safe place. Some days you wake up not feeling good, the easy option is to stay where you are safe, warm and comfortable.

2. #InnerVoice
Those days you find yourself wanting to stay in bed, you need an Inner Voice to help you get up and take those first 3 steps. That voice that says, “No Coco, the easy way is to lie here, the hard way is the right way. Get up and take those 3 steps.” Then you keep walking!

3. #BeTheWolf
Go out and get what’s yours. Be the Wolf is about having a fighting mindset, a positive attitude that you will achieve your goals that day. This takes preparation and starts the night before. Bring into focus your dream goal, break it down into achievable daily goals, and then adopt your #BetheWolf mindset to fight for those goals. It all starts with these ‘non-negotiables’ that you write down every morning and evening:
– Gratefuls: 3 things you are grateful for – family, wife, house, job, dream car…
– Reflection: 3 goals for the day – did you achieve them? Why not
– Goals: 3 achievable goals for tomorrow

4. #FeedTheWolf
To build a positive mindset we must feed the wolf. Nutrition is very important – we should have a balanced diet so we can work at optimum capability every day. Sleep is another critical factor, helping our body recover mentally, physically and emotionally. To help with sleep, do something meditative before you go to bed like breathing techniques, reading, listening to music, watching a candle.

5. #LiveLoveLaugh
We get so consumed by work and deadlines we can forget about those closest to us. When was the last time you played a game with your kids, watched a movie with your wife? The last time you laughed with your mates? Remember this, when you walk through adversity, those that mean the most to you will always be beside you. Make time for them.

Coco’s concept is simple and powerful, and his time is now dedicated to encouraging others to build resilience by implementing good habits and creating a positive attitude. He uses his lived experience to inspire and motivate others, humbly presenting his learnings to businesses, schools, military units and sporting bodies like the NRL Cowboys, Qantas Wallabies and Australian Kangaroos.

If there’s a key message to take from Coco’s experience, it’s that people have the power to build their own resilience. Resilience isn’t dictated by genetics, it’s a set of skills that are developed and, most importantly, can be learned. And that’s what Coco does – he gives people a toolbox of techniques that help them build the capacity to cope when things go wrong. And go wrong they will. But as Friedrich Nietzsche said (and Kelly Clarkson for the millennials): what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

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Coco’s captivating journey and his passionate and humble presentation style make him one of our most popular motivational speakers. His feedback is always exceptional, and his presentations are a guaranteed event highlight. If you’d like to engage Coco to show your team how to build resilience by implementing good habits and creating a positive attitude, get in touch with us for a chat.

September 7, 2021September 7, 2021

Top 5 Resilience Tips to Get You Through the Week

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.” – Elizabeth Edwards

History is full of inspiring examples of human resilience. People who have overcome incredible challenges and adversity to not only survive, but thrive.

Did you know that JK Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by 12 major publishing houses before being picked up? Or that Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor thought he lacked imagination? And Thomas Edison failed over 10,000 times in his efforts to invent a commercially viable electric lightbulb before he hit the jackpot.

While perfecting the art of resilience won’t necessarily make you famous, it will help you navigate your way through testing times – and Coronavirus has certainly thrown some doozies our way. With Mental Health Month coming up in October, and Australia once again in lockdown limbo, there’s never been a better time to shine a light on strategies, like resilience, that will help get you through.

Resilience gives you the power to cope when things go wrong, to adapt and bounce back even stronger. And while resilience is a long-game, we thought we’d start small and ask Chelsea Pottenger, accredited mindfulness and meditation coach (and one of our most popular Keynote Speakers), for 5 actions you can take today to help you get through the week. One week at a time is manageable, right?

1. Start the day the right way.
How often do you wake up, roll over and reach for your phone first thing in the morning? Most of us are guilty of this. But did you know this can cause the release of cortisol (our stress hormone)? When the first thing you see when you open your eyes is negative news, an email from your boss or client that triggers your emotions, or your social media feed, it can start your day off on the wrong foot. Try leaving your phone in a different room when you sleep and use an old-fashioned alarm clock to wake you in the morning.

2. Practice gratitude.
Research shows that just a small amount of gratitude goes a long way. Practicing gratitude can positively shift your mindset, build resilience and even improve your overall general health. Try thinking or journaling three things you are grateful for when you first wake up and sit with this feeling for a moment.

This simple exercise will put you in a great frame of mind for the rest of the day. If you’re feeling worn out or stressed throughout the day, try thinking about those three things – it will give you a new perspective.

3. Add movement to your day.
Exercise releases endorphins, which makes us feel good for the rest of the day. And we don’t have to engage in a vigorous workout or run 20km to experience the benefits. An article published in the Journal of Occupational Science found that just 10 minutes of walking at lunchtime improved people’s resilience and energy. So take 10 minutes today and get walking!

4. Start a meditation practice.
Research shows meditation can positively change your brain structure, helping you regulate your emotions and build resilience. Start small and build up to a 10min meditation practice.

5. Mindset reset.
Ruminative thought patterns can derail our day. When we are stuck thinking about a problem, stress or worry, we lose focus on what is essential. Dr Lucy Hone, a Professor and Well-being expert uses a powerful question to re-centre our thoughts. By asking yourself, “Is this helpful or harmful?” we can take a moment to reset our focus and start being productive again by breaking the negative thought pattern loop.

These 5 simple actions will help you build your resilience, enabling you to better tackle the challenges ahead… one week at a time. And who knows? Maybe you will make the history books!

Looking for ways to help get your team through the months ahead? We have some incredible speakers, including Chelsea Pottenger, available to present during Mental Health Month. Our Mindfulness and Resilience experts are available for live and virtual events of any size – get in touch with us for a chat!